The Lost Bride (Story of the Month)

Story of the Month

In the middle of the eighteenth century — that is, sometime between 1745 and 1750 — the Viscount de Rabastens set out with a band of his companions on a journey of touring and pleasure through the province of Dauphiné, and on a summer's day they reached the old château of Montségur.

The Viscount was twenty years old, and his companions were of about the same age.

As for the château of Montségur, it was one of those historic castles fallen into ruin, empty of inhabitants for some thirty years.

In ages past this château had been the seat of the Baron des Adrets, a member of the Huguenot sect, famed for his courage, his cruelty, and his cunning. In the reign of King Henry IV the Baron struck terror into the hearts of the inhabitants; he was forever at war with his neighbors, and in vain did his enemies try to lay hands on him, for whenever danger closed in on him he would vanish from sight into a hiding place whose secret approach no one knew.

The belief prevailed among the people that the château of Montségur, the Baron's seat, was inhabited by spirits, that demons frolicked within it, and that troubling noises issued from its vaults, so that no one dared enter it or move about its dark halls and corridors.

When the young men reached the château, they were received by a caretaker who lived in a small house beside it, and he went about with them through its precincts, repeating to them what people told of the Baron des Adrets. When in their rounds they came to a terrace overlooking the valley, the caretaker pointed to a plaque on which these words were inscribed:

"Lucie de Bracontal"
"June 25, 1715."

And he told them the following strange tale:

In the last years of the reign of King Louis XIV, there lived in this château the noble family of Bracontal, made up of the Marquis de Bracontal, who spent most of his time at the King's court or at the wars; the Marquise his wife, pure and charitable, whom the poor loved and honored; and their daughter Lucie, beautiful and gentle, whom all the inhabitants praised for her kind heart, her intelligence, and her graciousness.

In the spring of 1715 Lucie turned eighteen; the Viscount de Quinsonnas asked for her hand, and it was announced that the marriage would take place on the twenty-fifth of June of that year.

The wedding was indeed celebrated on that date. Prayers were held in the château's little chapel, and then the guests sat down at the table laid in the great hall. The bride took her place at the head of the table, exquisite in her loveliness, magnificent in her beauty, with her abundant fair hair, her gown of blue silk, and the jewels and gems she had received as a gift from her mother — those which the women of the family customarily handed down from generation to generation.

Not since the days of the Baron des Adrets had the château of Montségur seen a merrier feast than that one. Yet a small incident cast a shadow of gloom over the rejoicing: the bride broke her wedding ring while trying to crack an almond with her husband, and she cried out:

Ah!... This is an omen of ill fortune!

But the guests calmed her fears and said this was a foolish belief. Then everyone rose from the table and went out into the courtyard of the château to watch the peasant men and women dance, and the untoward incident was forgotten by all.

When the heat of the day had abated, one of the guests proposed that they all play a game of hide-and-seek, for the many halls, corridors, and underground passages of that château lent themselves to the perfection of that amusing game, making it easy for every player to find a hiding place the others could hardly discover.

Old and young set off to play, scattering through the château, plunging into its winding ways and its many corridors, their laughter ringing through the chambers and the vaults as they called and shouted to one another.

After an hour in which merriment reached its height, the end of the game was announced, and everyone was summoned to the great hall, where they gathered once more — but Lucie did not return!

Where was she? No doubt she had found some distant hiding place and had not heard her companions' call. So they called again and again, urging her to come out of her hiding place, but to no avail.

Anxiety crept over them, and they set out to search for her, through the vaults, the underground passages, and the halls, led by her bridegroom, the Viscount de Quinsonnas, shouting as he called: "Lucie! Lucie!"

The château servants and the peasants joined in the search for the girl; they left no corner of the château unsearched, then moved outside, to the roofs and to the walls, anxiety mounting in their hearts.

When they did not find the girl, nor come upon any trace of her, they went down the mountainside and into the valley, fearing that Lucie might have gone out onto the château terrace, and that her foot had slipped and she had plunged below. They combed the wood and searched among rocks and grasses, to no avail.

Darkness fell, and the day ended in grief and gloom, having begun in joy and smiles. The search was resumed on the morning of the following day, with no better result than before. The Marquise de Bracontal came to believe that her beloved daughter had plunged to the bottom of the valley and that some wild beast had devoured her.

Days and months passed, and there was no clue to cast a gleam of light on the poor girl's disappearance! The Marquise clung to her belief, and she placed on the château terrace that memorial plaque, engraving on it her daughter's name and the date of the day on which she disappeared; but she did not write the word "died," for she had not lost hope of finding the lost daughter.

After this tragedy the Bracontal family abandoned the ill-omened château and entrusted its keeping to that caretaker.

Thirty years went by without the Marquise ever returning to the château, preferring to live in Valence, in complete seclusion from the world, devoting herself to works of piety and charity.

Such was the tale the caretaker told the young sightseers. But youthful high spirits left emotion no way into their hearts over an event that had befallen, thirty years before, a girl they did not know. So they cast a glance at the plaque, and at the cross above it, drew near the edge of the terrace overlooking the valley, and then went back to thinking about the program of their day. The lunch hour was near, so they brought out their provisions and sat down to eat at the table the caretaker and his wife had laid for them, in the shade of the crumbling walls.

As for the Viscount de Rabastens, he was of all his companions the most taken with the story of the girl Lucie. His feelings were stirred by it, and he sensed a bond forming between himself and that girl who had vanished thirty years before, whose name he had never heard until then. He did not share his companions' food and merriment, but kept thinking about the girl's disappearance, stroking with his hand the back of a big gray cat which, drawn by the smell of the food, had begun circling the table, then settled on the Viscount's knee, gazing up at him with its eyes and begging for more caresses.

Rabastens rose from the table before his companions and walked away toward the end of the terrace, and his feet led him to that memorial plaque, which he read once more:

"Lucie de Bracontal"

"June 25, 1715"

Why did his heart flutter at the sight of that name? He drew near the brink of the valley and cast a glance down the mountainside, and it seemed to him that the girl was still there, that those who had searched for her had not searched well, and that he would yet see a scrap of her blue silk gown, or a lock of her fair hair, caught on the bramble thorns!

Rain began to fall, and the Viscount retraced his steps to where his companions were joking and trading anecdotes and pleasantries.

One of them proposed that they all play hide-and-seek until the rain stopped and the clouds cleared away. The young men applauded the idea, and the game began. The players divided into two sides: one side to hide in the halls, the corridors, and the underground passages, and one side to hunt for the hidden until it found them. The Viscount de Rabastens was on the first side.

The players scattered, each to his own quarter, and Rabastens made off into the interior of the château, seeing in this an opportunity offered him to roam

through the places in which Lucie de Bracontal had once disappeared!

He reached a dark corner in one of the corridors, and heard behind him the footsteps of one of the players searching for him. Wanting to slip away from him, he pressed himself against the wall as closely as he could and leaned his back upon it... and suddenly he felt a hidden door open behind him, and there he was, in a hiding place that no one could ever reach.

The young man entered the hiding place and heard the door slam behind him, and it seemed to him that the player pursuing him was passing his hands over the wood of the door from the other side, hoping to find in it a way into the hiding place.

Then the player moved away, and Rabastens found himself in a dark chamber: was it a vault, or a closet? It was not easy to tell, for the walls left no opening for light. Rabastens decided to leave that place, having thrown his companions off the scent, but he tried in vain to find the door by which he had entered.

He passed his hand over the wall, up and down and across, and it became plain to him that the door had no handle on the inside by which he could pull it. So he began feeling along the other walls, hoping to find some outlet from that hiding place to the world outside. Suddenly his hand fell upon a small cavity; he put his finger into it and pressed, and behold, another door opened before him, leading him into a second chamber, into which one descended by a few steps, and through which filtered a feeble light entering by a narrow opening set high in the wall.

Rabastens went down into the chamber and saw there an old suit of armor hanging on the wall, a large table, and two chairs — and a foul smell filled his nostrils!

One of the two chairs was placed so that whoever entered by the door could see nothing of it but its high back. And someone was seated on that chair!

Rabastens tried to approach it while holding the door so that it should not close behind him, but he could not; the door slammed shut, and it proved that there was no way of opening it from the inside either.

Rabastens let fear find no path to his heart. Was not this person seated on the chair one of the inhabitants of the château?

He approached the chair — and behold, the sitter was a woman, rigid and motionless, her head thrown back against the top of the chair, her hands stretched out along its arms.

She was asleep, no doubt; perhaps she was the caretaker's daughter, who had taken refuge in this place for fear of the rain and the storm — and it would not become a young man to wake her from her sleep!

On the table before her he saw an old book. He took it in his hand, and behold, it was a copy of the Scriptures... the Scriptures as the adherents of the Huguenot faith used to publish them... dating back two hundred years... It was the Bible of the Baron des Adrets, master of the château in ages gone by.

But... what was this?... On the inside page of the cover were a few words, written, or rather scratched, with a bodkin like those the women of the age of Louis XIV used to carry.

And Rabastens read them: "You who enter this room, commend your soul to God, for you shall never leave it, as I have never left it... Lucie de Bracontal!"

A cry of fear and horror burst from the young man's breast! Lucie de Bracontal! This sleeping woman — surely she must wake from her sleep...

The young man sprang toward her, stretched out his hand, and touched her hand... Oh, horror! The fingers he touched were cold and hard as bones... He rushed toward the door, seeking deliverance... and began

shouting at the top of his voice: "Help! To me! Help!"

But he felt his voice choking in his breast, and he knew that however many cries he sent up, they would never pierce the massive walls that shut him off from the world...

He took up the armor and hurled it at the door, hoping someone would hear the sound of the blow, and he repeated his shouting, but to no avail.

Was he doomed to die of hunger or of suffocation in this place that was like a well, entered by nothing but rats and insects?

His strength failed him, his thoughts grew confused, his head swam, and he threw himself down upon the floor.

Night had drawn its curtain over the château, and Rabastens slept a deep sleep.

He woke early, and returned to thinking about his condition, and about some means of escaping his predicament.

Now he grasped the truth!

This woman — rather, this lifeless corpse — was Lucie de Bracontal, whom her family had missed on the day of her wedding celebration and of whom they had found no trace. Yes, she was Lucie, who had entered this hiding place thirty years before, as he had entered it that day, and had not been able to leave it.

And this secret hiding place was also that refuge in which the Baron des Adrets used to conceal himself whenever his enemies tightened the noose about him.

Yes, here he used to hide, that noble brigand who spread terror through the land; and here Lucie had hidden and died; and here Rabastens had hidden... would he meet his end as she had?

The day passed and night drew near... He was a prisoner within these walls, together with the girl who had been buried alive. He had been here twenty-four hours; was there any way out of the tomb?

While he was pondering his plight, his eye was caught by two points gleaming in the darkness, through a small opening high in the wall.

The two points drew nearer... They were the eyes of the cat... the caretaker's cat... the one that had sat on Rabastens's knee and taken pleasure in his caresses.

This cat could be his messenger to the outside — to his companions, who were doubtless searching for him...

The young man resolved to seize the opportunity, and not to let this means of deliverance slip from his hand.

He drew his handkerchief from his pocket... approached slowly and warily the cat, which had come down into the chamber... pounced upon it and gripped its neck with his hands... and despite what he suffered from its claws, he managed to tie the handkerchief to its leg and wind its two ends over its back... Then he released it, and it leapt out through the opening in terror.

And Rabastens stood upon the arm of the chair and sent through the opening cries for help, with all the strength of his throat, redoubled by fear and dread — until he fell to the floor of the chamber in a faint!

*

The companions of the Viscount de Rabastens grew anxious, and refused to leave the château of Montségur before they had found their friend. They had gone on searching for him from the moment they became aware of his disappearance.

And the cat was the lost young man's messenger to his friends. They saw Rabastens's handkerchief wound over its back and tied to its leg, and they began to watch its comings and goings, until they saw it enter by the little opening. From it they learned their companion's hiding place, and they tried to reach him through the secret doors; but they failed, and only one course remained to them, which they took: to break down the wall around the opening and descend into the hidden chamber by a wooden ladder.

This they did, and they found their companion in a faint beside the body of Lucie de Bracontal.

When the Marquise de Bracontal learned what had happened, she hastened to the château of Montségur, and found in herself courage enough to enter the chamber in which her daughter had been buried alive. But the walls had to be torn down, for opening the two secret doors remained impossible. And when the walls were demolished, there were found within them infernal contrivances made up of chains, weights, and balls, which the Baron des Adrets had devised so that he might enter his hiding place and leave it whenever he pleased.

And the Marquise de Bracontal turned the Baron's hiding place, her daughter's sepulcher, into a little chapel for prayer!

In that little chapel — whose walls remain to this day bare and stripped of all ornament and decoration, as they were in the days of the noble brigand who made it a refuge for himself and a refuge for his treasures, and whose secret door has been preserved as it was in the time long past — in that chapel, in whose floor the body of the poor girl Lucie was buried, prayers are now offered for the repose of her soul; and as incense rises through its corners, the faint phantoms left in it by the deeds of the Baron des Adrets generations ago are dispelled!